It is rare, even now, for many women not to find the words
Elizabeth David magical. Her influence was tremendous. I still have
battered copies of all her earlier books, the most moving perhaps being
French Country Cooking with its enchanting drawings and 'must
try' recipes. Her personality, however, always remained shadowy.
The more one read her, the more one was intrigued. When, and why, for
instance had Mrs David kept house in so many Mediterranean countries?
What kind of life did she lead?

One feels rapped over the knuckles by those voyeuristic tendencies
as soon as one begins Artemis Cooper's book. Elizabeth David
shunned personal publicity. 'Everything I want to say is in my
books' she maintained. She discouraged impertinent curiosity with
frozen silence and there is an uneasy feeling, as one reads, that one is
prying into her chosen privacy. Many of her letters, one is glad to
learn, have not been included and their secrets remain intact.

However, the story is too fascinating to miss. Artemis Cooper, in
spite of certain stylistic quirks (throughout the book, unless they are
famous, she introduces characters as 'someone called...'), has
the gift of vividly evoking the atmosphere of the different stages in
Elizabeth's life. Her patrician childhood in Sussex, with its
privileges and privations; the early death of her father and family
feuds over property; rebellion and the intense, raffish bohemian life
between the wars. But it is the adventures and horrors of the war years
which bring out the strength and creativity of Elizabeth David's
character. As she flees from Italy to Greece, from Greece to Crete and
from Crete to Egypt her path fortuitously re-crosses that strange
middle-class English speaking society that the war had spawned and from
which she drew life-long friends.

The intensity of these Mediterranean years ends abruptly with her
return to a cold, drab, exhausted post-war England. Rationing still has
the country in its grip as does the coldest winter in living memory. Her
husband, Tony David, speculates in a number of financially disastrous
undertakings. She sees capital eaten away and debts mounting. These do
not worry Tony but horrify Elizabeth who feels humiliated and mortified by her husband and her debts. The end of her unsatisfactory marriage
starts the development of her outstanding talents as an innovator, a
scholar and a writer.

Although this period of Elizabeth David's life appears one of
greater serenity due to the recognition of her talent and her financial
success, it is by no means emotionally tranquil. Trouble with her
publishers causes her untold anguish as do, later, squabbles over her
shop and even copyright of her own name. She is dogged by accident,
illness, betrayal, bereavement. But she travels, writes, cooks and
cultivates her friendships over long, convivial lunches at her beloved
kitchen table. Her research becomes increasingly scholarly. Her
collection of source material fills her rooms with ancient cookery
books, papers and utensils. This gives her great purpose and pleasure
and her life does not fizzle out. She dies quite suddenly.

At her funeral the church at her native Folkington is filled to
bursting. Among the stupendous floral tributes someone had left a loaf
of bread and a bunch of herbs tied up in brown paper. One feels that she
would have liked that.

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